Every year, Neil Engelman carefully collects his data, stands before his company's board of directors and is asked the same question: What caused more outages? The lightning or the squirrels? Four of the past five years, the answer has been the squirrels, says Engelman, vice president of operations for the Lincoln Electric System in Nebraska. Nebraska is not alone. Many states are grappling with a big increase in the number of power outages caused by squirrel electrocutions. Squirrels that fry themselves on power lines and transformers cause tens of thousands of blackouts every year. Some states have seen a massive jump in recent years in the number of such outages. In Georgia, squirrel-related outages more than tripled from 5,273 in 2005 to 16,750 in 2006. While the outages are usually smaller than ones caused by weather, they are costly. Georgia Power officials estimate the rodents cost them $2 million last year. Stopping the squirrels is costing utilities millions more dollars.... http://www.usatoday.com

They're the most widely recognized ancient cultures of North, South and Central America, according to visitors surveyed by The Field Museum. But a new exhibit called "The Ancient Americas" shows that the Western Hemisphere was home to hundreds of diverse societies established long before European explorers arrived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The hunter-gatherers of the Clovis society of North America perfected a spear 13,000 years ago that could pierce the skin of a mammoth. The Tairona culture of present-day Colombia crafted elaborate gold jewelry 1,500 years ago. And in 500 A.D., more people lived in the city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico than in Rome. The permanent exhibit, which opened last week, encompassed five years of work, including the public surveys that helped guide its developers. It represents a major overhaul of the museum's old exhibit, which dated to the 1950s and focused on the archaeology of the Americas. ...http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2942632

Adama Abdulai is 30 but she looks a decade older.Her eyes glazed over, her hair matted and unkempt, she stares blankly into the distance, half-naked. One night Abdulai tore up her family's last few banknotes into tiny pieces. Last week she tried to kill her baby. Her family says she has lost her mind since she crossed into Chad to escape conflict at home in Central African Republic three months ago. "We know that before leaving CAR she was healthy, but when she crossed the border she started being very aggressive," said Josiane Nguerebaye of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, cradling Abdulai's 4-month-old boy, Dairu. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2942660

Thousands of NATO troops have moved into Afghanistan's biggest opium-growing region to repel an expected springtime counterattack by a resurgent Taliban. The offensive in Helmand province seeks to cut off drug money that is a major source of funding for the Islamic rebel militia. Analysts say the NATO force will be challenged by comparatively low troop levels and its inability to chase the Taliban as they slip in and out of neighboring Pakistan. "The Taliban is based in Pakistan," says James Dobbins, a former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan. "No Afghan-based operation can do it lasting damage. The best we can do is set them back on their heels." About 4,500 NATO troops — including soldiers from the USA, Canada and Great Britain — pushed into northern Helmand province last week. One thousand troops from the Afghan National Army joined them, fanning out to secure sensitive targets before mountain snows melt and allow rebel forces greater movement....http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-03-11-afghan_N.htm?csp=34

A fast-moving brush fire scorched more than 2,000 acres of parched hillside and charred at least three homes Sunday, forcing authorities to evacuate more than 500 homes, Orange County fire officials said. The 3-square-mile fire threatened many other houses and the firefighters working to protect them, Anaheim city spokesman John J. Nicoletti said. "This is a very dangerous firefight," said Orange County Fire Authority Chief Ed Fleming. "The terrain is quite rugged, with homes on top of ridges, and the fire picks up speed as it head up the hill," Fleming said. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries, authorities said. The fire, stoked by hot dry winds and fueled by chaparral, spread south and west quickly in an unincorporated part of Orange County and threatened multimillion dollar homes here and in Anaheim Hills, about 35 miles southeast of Los Angeles....http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/11/calif.fire.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us

High feed costs, created by the explosive growth of the fuel ethanol industry, will lower U.S. beef and broiler chicken output this year by a quarter billion lbs from earlier forecasts, the U.S. government said on Friday.The Agriculture Department also said freeze damage would cut the Florida orange crop by 6 percent and California's by 20 percent from a month ago. A drop-off in cotton exports will create the largest year-end surplus in 21 years, 8.8 million bales weighing 480 lbs each. The Agriculture Department said beef output would dip by 62 million lbs and chicken by 124 million lbs from last month's estimate, with total red meat and poultry production forecast for 90.359 billion lbs. Cattle, hog and poultry feeders say abrupt increases in feed costs — predominantly corn — are squeezing their operations....http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2941915